There was more drama in the world of esports racing this weekend—not in NASCAR, though. That series announced a return to real-world racing later this month, and its drivers have been on their best behavior after a pair of high-profile fiascos in April. No, this time IndyCar is in the spotlight. The month of May is special to the series, but this year the racing had to take place in a virtual Indianapolis, with a 175-mile event held in iRacing thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown. There was plenty of action, just not all of it good. The highlight—or low point, perhaps—was when last year’s Indy 500 winner and 2016 series champion Simon Pagenaud appeared to take out F1’s rising star, Lando Norris, three laps before the end of the race.

The 70-lap race was action-packed, even by IndyCar standards. The cars circulated in a much tighter pack than they would in real life, even after IndyCar tweaked some iRacing environmental settings like wind speed to make things a bit more life-like. And when cars race together in a pack at speeds close to 220mph (350km/h), crashes happen. In the real world, those can have awful consequences, like the crash that took Dan Wheldon’s life at Las Vegas in 2011. Bruised feelings are the worst that can happen in iRacing, though.

The seeds were probably sown last weekend, when Norris—a young phenom in F1 and extremely good sim racer—blitzed the IndyCar regulars when he was invited to join them in a race at a virtual Circuit of the Americas. At (virtual) Indianapolis with eight laps to go, Norris, Pagenaud, and Graham Rahal were three-wide for the lead, going into one of Indy’s four turns, when it went wrong for Pagenaud who ended up backwards after hitting the wall and damaging his car. Five laps later, Norris was looking strong, leading his two Arrow McLaren teammates toward a potential 1-2-3 victory, when he came across a slow-moving Pagenaud, who was now a couple of laps down following a trip to pit lane to repair his car.

Norris ran into the back of the fluorescent yellow Team Penske car of Pagenaud, ending his race, too. It could perhaps have been a racing incident, with the Penske driver just lacking situational awareness, except for a comment Pagenaud made to his engineer over the team chat. “We take out Lando, let’s do it,” he said. Pagenaud later clarified that he only meant to hold up the visiting F1 driver, not intentionally wreck him, although Norris appeared not to believe that when discussing the incident with fellow F1 star Max Verstappen later that day on Twitch.

The drama didn’t end there. On the final lap, Marcus Ericsson takes the lead from Norris’ teammate Pato O’Ward before they made contact going through turn four, sending Ericsson into the wall. The third Arrow McLaren driver, Oliver Askew, looked set for a maiden win when he was then intentionally wrecked by Santino Ferruci, a driver who was thrown out of the F2 series in 2018 for doing something similar in real life. In the end, the win went to another visiting driver, Australia’s Scott McLaughin, who normally races for Team Penske’s Supercar team Down Under.

All of that late race action was overshadowed by the Norris/Pagenaud incident, though. McLaren team boss Zak Brown decried Pagenaud’s behavior, and many F1 and IndyCar fans—including those in the media—took it as an excuse to get tribal and tell the other side why their particular flavor of open-wheel racing wasn’t any good. Many others jumped in to shout “IT’S JUST A GAME” at anyone they felt was taking it too seriously.

That’s all a shame. While the racing world remains in lockdown, the move to sim racing has given us a chance to see racers let down their guard somewhat and race in disciplines they wouldn’t normally be seen in. The All Star Legends races on Saturday mornings have become the highpoint of my week, as racers like Jenson Button, Juan Pablo Montoya, and now Sebastian Vettel have joined the fun, racing for charity in 1970s F1 cars, for example. IndyCar’s iRacing challenge has been a little more serious than F1’s foray into esports with pro drivers, but unlike IMSA, NASCAR, or Formula E, it hasn’t run it as a formal championship. That may well have led some drivers to take things less seriously than others.

If the pandemic allows, the real-world Indianapolis 500 will take place on August 23. For now, you can rewatch the race below.

Listing image by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

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